The present invention relates to a cosmetic method for preventing and/or treating skin stretchmarks, and to the use of a composition to prepare a dermatological medicinal product for preventing and/or treating stretchmarks.
Stretchmarks are visible marks on the skin resulting from the skin being stretched due to a gain in weight or mechanical stresses, which usually concern women, after puberty or a first pregnancy. About 50% of pregnant women develop stretchmarks, on the thighs, the abdomen and/or the breasts. Stretchmarks may also appear during physiological or pathological states such as obesity, tuberculosis and typhoid fever, and also during a relatively intensive dietary regime. The treatment of stretchmarks has been described, for example, in the article by P. Zheng et al., “Anatomy of striae”, British Journal of Dermatology 112:185-193 (1985), in which it is especially reported that stretchmarks are scars resulting from an inflammation process which destroys elastic fibers.
Since then, many compounds have been proposed as active principles for treating stretchmarks, such as, for example, tretinoin (or all-trans-retinoic acid). According to the article by R. E. B. Watson et al., “Fibrillin microfibrils are reduced in skin exhibiting striae distensae”, British Journal of Dermatology 138:931-937 (1998), it would appear that tretinoin has an anti-stretchmark action with a tendency toward essentially restoring the network of fibrillins, which are the main constituent of the microfibrils within elastic fibers, when compared with other constituents of the extracellular matrix.
However, although the active compounds of the prior art produce a stretchmark-regressing effect, it nevertheless remains that the results obtained are not entirely satisfactory, in particular given the well-known skin intolerance problem of tretinoin. There has thus hitherto been a real demand for the development of a product for efficiently preventing and/or treating, with acceptable skin tolerance, this complex and particularly unattractive problem of stretchmarks.
It has now been found, entirely surprisingly and unexpectedly, that the use of certain peptides makes it possible entirely significantly to prevent and/or treat skin stretchmarks, in a manner which is acceptable as regards skin tolerance.